1. |
But On it Goes...
02:11
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I'd rather not be bothered by the Catholic girl below
Because I can't keep writing songs about which I don't want her to know
While she's holding hands with someone whom I'll probably despise
I should shut her out and focus on the true love of my life,
But I don't...
I'd rather not be bothered by this reoccurring theme
That compiles itself inside my head, erasing all my dreams
And replacing them with risky plans in which I want no part
But I cannot reach inside my chest and redirect my heart,
So I don't...
And discontented I love the lie that is my life, that I tell from time to time
Of how it sets my body free from the music that interrupts my poetry
But nothing gets worse after the pain starts to hurt
And I fight a hundred wars, write a thousand songs
That will never get sung or be done.
Thus, I'd rather not be bothered by the Catholic girl below
Because my future's clear of every calling curse of the unknown
So I take a few steps back and find there's love lost in the lure
And I stomp my feet and grind my teeth and curse human nature,
But on it goes...
© Jackson Wargo 2010
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2. |
Fine Tooth Comb
03:56
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Please, don't cut your hair
and change who you are
and become a memory.
I'd forget your name,
and you'd do the same
to me too quickly.
You once were a dream
who smiled back at me,
and let me keep clinging.
You pulled back your hair,
kissed my despair,
and sent me home singing,
O behold! where the lovers go
I'll be home when the sun grows cold.
Be my fine tooth comb
until you choose not to grow,
and know that i'm not ready
to fall in love with just anybody...
Please, don't cut your hair
and change who you are,
because you can still belong.
Yeah... it's been a while,
it's been 31 miles,
it's been two years and six songs.
So, I won't shave my face,
or choose to replace
you while you journey.
I'll get in the car
and drive to wherever you are,
and reclaim your yearning.
O behold! where the lovers go
I'll be home when the sun grows cold.
Be my fine tooth comb
until you choose not to grow,
and know that i'm not ready
to fall in love with just anybody...
Darling, I walked to your house,
and turned right around
to write you new lyrics—
So if you must cut your hair,
don't let it cover your ears,
and maybe you'll hear this.
© Jackson Wargo 2011
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3. |
The Summer's Eye
03:37
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It's difficult to explain the pesty, cycling phase
That is the root of my smile
From one year ago today, the feeling hasn't changed
And left me distorting every mile
Between where we met and outside your house
Where the love would reveal itself
When I discovered that the summer's eye was watching me
While I was unaware
Until I looked down past her bare feet and saw Roman sandals sitting there
My heartbeat leaped alone
Out of my chest, in remodels of old homes.
Meanwhile, summer's eye just winks and blinds me
And it comes up through a friend,
But the cycle is worth the loneliness at the end.
It's difficult to understand just what grabs this boyish man
With the force of all belonging
But one year ago today, I sat here in the same place
Writing the lyrics with the morning
As I reached for the phone,
The guilt brought me home,
and I'd never felt more alone.
When I discovered that the summer's eye was watching me
While I was unaware
Until I looked down past her bare feet and saw Roman sandals sitting there
My heartbeat leaped alone
Out of my chest, in remodels of old homes.
Meanwhile, summer's eye just winks and blinds me
And it comes up through a friend,
But the cycle is worth the loneliness at the end.
Southern girls in summer dresses
Kiss my lips and invert my senses,
Remove all decision rights,
and send a signal back to the summer's
I was just a mold of memory
To absorb and bask in every
Particle of sacred light
Sent to be my guide
I was so lucky that the summer's eye was watching me
While I was unaware
Until I looked down past her bare feet and saw Roman sandals sitting there
My heartbeat leaped alone
Out of my chest, in remodels of old homes.
Meanwhile, summer's eye just winks and blinds me
And it all occurs again,
But the cycle is worth the loneliness at the end
Therefore, I'm thankful that we were once friends.
© Jackson Wargo 2010
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4. |
Hooray for Hypocrites!
03:34
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Hooray for hypocrites!
for religious biases!
your pretentious smile is
a smack from the face.
I've got some external viruses
and personal alliances
you claim that my reliance is
completely astray...
no way.
I was a lonely Catholic boy in Philadelphia’s pit
filled up with students and with demons and with all of your bullshit
it was a Christian environment
with no sign of God in it
my brother was a prophet
when he told me to get out
right away.
Hooray for mission trips
that ruin relationships!
the African continent
needs you there today!
but I'm just as confident
that you're the type of protestant
who hoards all of her quarters
but is clearly made of nothing but cheap change.
I was a helpless, imbecilic little lover of you
and I was worthy of your pity in your Ivy League dorm room
but your eyes were wide
and I could tell you had not been crying
and you'd got better at lying
'cause you told me you didn't know what to say.
So come on!
invite me
to dwell in your lack of Christian hospitality!
So come on!
apologize!
and not in a minor third descending line
just try
and I’ll open my eyes
as if it were for the very first time!
and be blinded by the darkness
So hooray for blasphemy!
for orgasmic ecstasy
you find in god complexities
'cause you think you're saved
but if you really feared your God
you wouldn't know just what he wanted
there'd be whole parts of your body
that are not even worthy to pray.
You were a stubborn little girl inside a secular cult
with a cross and a label and techniques to feel guilt
but you're not thus victimized
and my feelings intensified
while I was feasting on my pride
so I'll just get out of your way.
© Jackson Wargo 2011
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5. |
Pelican Hill
07:13
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Pelican Hill
On Pelican Hill, I stared at the world
I saw lights, but no people—
I heard sound, but no quarrels.
I parked the car at a park off the street,
And the view of the county had me counting the cities.
God was there too, but not all too close to me
So I reached in my pocket for my mom’s wooden Rosary.
I like to believe that His voice then came down—
I’d write what He said, but I’d just put words in His mouth—
And in one sanctified second, through my sigh of the cross,
All of my sorrowful heartache was gone,
But it snapped back and tied a tight noose around my neck,
And it spun me around—made me hang my own head.
So, I stomped to the car, and I hit the ignition
While thinking of my current, failing ambitions—
I’ve now been stood up on each end of the country,
And no one has called me to say that they miss me.
On Pelican Hill, I sang to the world
the songs of my brothers who write their struggles with girls.
We’re and army of marksmen who pitifully march:
We keep aiming; keep firing; keep missing your hearts
And retreat back to places like Pelican Hill,
Where we scream up to God one more verse of our will
Until we have to leave, because our throats are too sore,
And drive home through the echoes of our scratchy, raw vocal chords.
Pelican Hill, from which I drove home
To let my spider-webbed typewriter assure me I’m still alone,
But I passed a Church and I genuflected,
And I hope I felt the soul of my dead love being resurrected—
Perching itself up on Pelican Hill
So that I might retrieve it lest I remain still
With this dissonant tension inside of my head—
Stop my whining in lyric; start my living instead.
But if I knew how to cry, O I swear that I would.
I’d make a salt water ocean comprised of my tears and blood.
On Pelican Hill, I stared at the world—
I saw myself, but no angels; I saw God, but no miracles.
© Jackson Wargo 2011
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6. |
Porcelain, Actually
04:27
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Porcelain, Actually
One time I stayed up half of the night,
Looked at the sky and I saw a light rising from the west side
So it could start the day in a brand new way
and say I don't have to force the good to stay,
Just hold it in the right place.
I looked back and told it I could do that
Then I sat and analyzed the facts as it began to fade into black.
I have seen lips and fingers curving with a smile
I can see the moving colors, but it's going to be a little while
Before I say the words "I love you" again,
'cause I'm afraid I'll never want it to end.
But I have changed, I'm through with childish games
And advancing in ways that take me back a space,
and that's how I will remain.
But I know myself better than anyone else,
So I'm taking my dusty book off of the shelf,
because there's a story to tell that's just now writing itself
I'm seeing scarves and sandals that could make me smile
But I'm hearing life say, "slow down—it's going to be a little while—because of certain circumstances, you will get to know what real romance is."
You say your skin is more like porcelain
Keeping you clean through thick and through thin,
No matter where it has been.
You and I talk, it seems to help a lot,
Exchanging lyrical thoughts from our favorite songs.
Maybe we'll give it a shot.
© Jackson Wargo 2009
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7. |
Hiraeth
03:49
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Lately, while watching bodies pass
I've started thinking, but what good comes from that?
'cause I'm believing everyone's broken here
with the illusion that people mature with years
and I find life here's just a little more alone than I expected
and I can't articulate exactly how I've been affected
by my thoughts being my only source of local dialogue
and the guitar with me and my Rosary become my simple response
so please don't blame me, because these are the chords I know
and when I play them, it makes me feel at home
while I am searching throughout these crowded halls
for a person with whom I'm comfortable
and I find life here's just a little more alone than I expected
and it's forcing me to make myself completely independent
of anyone or anything with the potential to react
but the guitar with me and my rosary are the ones who are talking back
so if the morning wakes me dreaming out the night
then let the morning warn the evening to get ready to comply
and stop the sun from flowing deeper through the night
because the lack of light brings morning to life.
and I have this question that I'm inclined to ask
of my perception of them or this or that
but it's confusing and I can't understand
if I'm the victim, the problem, or God's instrument
and I find life here's just a little more alone than i expected
and it's not untrue to say that I've been wholly misdirected
by everyone and everything who's ever made it out alive
the guitar with me and my rosary are collectively surprised
at social life's easy demise
and how I begrudgingly comply
while being respectful to the times
and allowing them to formulate my life.
© Jackson Wargo 2010
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8. |
Visions of New York
02:51
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Yell at me your problems of the world
and relay to me your dreams of saintly girls
who love the smell of gasoline and cigarettes
and how none you know will be like that you suspect
explain to me just how your troubled mind
has still found better things about which to write
you tell me love has broken all your body's bones
but you have a home closer to Heaven than my own,
than my own.
So in my vision, I am sitting
singing songs I've not yet written
that are carried by the New York sun and breeze.
Get in a car with my brother,
say goodbye to my mother,
with the trouble of a lover far behind me.
Play for me the music's perfect jazz
let your fingers move unnaturally fast
combine your mood with thoughts that you can sing,
and swear to me you're improvising.
Be the model life that will live long
and without words show me I'm mixing mine all wrong.
Remind me who I was before I hurt—
I'm tainted by love and song and can't remember
So in my vision, I am sitting
singing songs I've not yet written
that are carried by the New York sun and breeze.
Get in a car with my brother,
say goodbye to my mother,
with the trouble of a lover far behind me—
And California may or may not miss me.
© Jackson Wargo 2011
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9. |
In Vagueness of You
05:56
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There were fireworks for half an hour
And you were singing some song I didn't care to remember.
You were honestly and unequivocally the only thing about which I could think
You were sitting up, careful not to lean on love
As I picked the skin off the side of my thumb
And whispered in your ear so I could smell your hair,
Or get as close as I could to kissing you right there.
You looked at me, laughing quietly,
Focusing fireworks in your periphery.
Then turned back your head, and I lost your attention
That at least I held for a few seconds.
I consciously pressed against your body,
and I noted that you were not moving.
And it was then I knew, you were existential truth
Because my guardian angel spoke in vagueness of you.
© Jackson Wargo 2011
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10. |
The Summer's Salt
06:43
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The Summer’s Salt
Last night I dreamt our hearts were still magnets inside our chests
And with one distant pull, we were rendered alone and uncomfortable
We let the distance be a job for the compass entirely
Until our sides did flip, and we found attraction in opposites
Today I woke still feeling the remnants of last month’s stroke
That took half my mind into dimensions absent of space and time
Just an empty hall in which all my screams echo off the wall
And on a screen plays a slideshow of your last night with me
And I still taste the summer’s salt from the asphalt
That kissed my crown while I was tumbling upside down.
When I missed your lips, I couldn’t catch my grip,
And I pulled my shirt until the seams began to rip
To make you watch my heart as it fell apart
But you gave me optimistic hope of a restart.
So I drove home not feeling as alone
As I should have if I only could have known.
Now it seems this room has become more constant than you
And my focused eyes view your ghost as a blessing in disguise.
But if these walls could hear, they would remember everything that I’ve shared,
And if this light could see, it would find you and bring you back to me
And fill you with the summer’s salt from the asphalt
That kissed my crown while I was tumbling upside down.
When I missed your lips, I couldn’t catch my grip,
And I pulled my shirt until the seams completely ripped
But you couldn’t watch my heart as it fell apart
But you gave me unrealistic hope of a restart.
So I drove home not feeling as alone
As I should have if I only could have known,
Or seen, or had the courage to believe,
In every verse of written word that you just do not deserve.
‘Cause it’s getting harder to believe each time you tell me you still love me—
I bet you’re just lying out of loyalty.
And I’m not certain I know how to lay all my armor down,
And let you, and let you live and fuck around.
Now that I’ve measured the cost, I’d never choose to have loved and lost,
Lest I lose and let the losing continue…
So when you hear this, I hope you cry.
I hope the tear salt burns your eyes.
I hope that little piece of me inside you dies.
© Jackson Wargo 2011
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